


Floating

by TheIndianWinter



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bilbo Baggins Dies, Children, Dale - Freeform, Gen, Ghost!Bilbo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIndianWinter/pseuds/TheIndianWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the ghosts that pass through these lands, many stay only for a brief time, others for a while, but of them all, there is one who endures.</p>
<p>They call him the Wandering Burglar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floating

**_Floating_ **

I grew up in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain. The land that surrounds Erebor, in which the Kingdom of Dale resides, is now rich and fertile. Few birds pass through there though, as if they can sense the sorrow that permeates the very bones of the earth.

It is perhaps not so farfetched then, to believe that the ground there would cling to it’s past, feeling the great battles it bore witness to pass from history into legend. The children all talk of spectres that roam the land between the walls of Dale and the gates to the Kingdom of Erebor.

Children, you see, they see things we as adults do not, and it would be wise of us not to dismiss them as wild imaginings.

Children are not hardened by necessity against the grim cruelty of the world, they are open to the rich spectrum of emotion, life and what may lay beyond.

The children keep the legends of the Mountain alive.

Of all the ghosts that pass through these lands, many stay only for a brief time, others for a while, but of them all, there is one who endures.

They call him the Wandering Burglar, though none can quite remember what he stole or whom it was for. Despite this, the children insist he was not a bad burglar and indeed, the ghost is a kindly soul, and for centuries, they say, he has looked over the Mountain.

Once, when Arlen was yet again busy mooning over the baker’s daughter at the market, I slipped away, easily twisting through all the adults until I made it to a certain dwarfish stall, where Freyja sat upon her stool, swaying her little booted feet and looking thoroughly bored. At first, I had found it a little funny, that she was so young and so tiny, yet she was thirty-seven - the same age as Mummy was.

“Look,” she told me proudly, the instant she caught sight of me, and she thrust her chin at me, “I got my first whiskers.” Certainly, on her chin were a few wispy black hairs that had not been there before winter, when we last saw one another.

After a little careful persuasion, her father let us go on the condition that we not stray beyond the market that wound through most of Lower Dale and then the pair of us took off through the streets, ducking through familiar shortcuts until we reached the outpost where Girion passed his days. His own father had been convinced that the fresher air there would be far better for his ailing health.

Banna, his nurse, the kindly old wife of an apothecary from Harad, grimaced as we arrived. Girion was in much better health than usual when he came down to greet us, with a slight pinkness to his normally so pallid cheeks and a twinkle in his dark eyes. Banna gave us some food, simpler fare than what we would have been offered than when Girion still lived up at the castle, but delicious nonetheless, and then she let us out into the nearby countryside, but implored that we return before the city bells chimed five.

We did not pay Banna much heed for we were too excited by the prospect of freedom, and the open country after the long winter kept from the freezing cold. We tore from Dale in a blur of legs and laughter, not stopping until we crested a small hill, and we collapsed onto the grass. The terrain sheltered us from the breeze that gusted through the valley and it allowed Girion’s wheezing breaths to slow down to normal.

We wandered through the valley at the slower pace then, Freyja in the lead, a large stick in her hand and a wide grin on her dark face.

I do not know for how long we walked before we found him, the pale creature, roughly the height of Girion, shifting his immaterial feet through the earth, as if he could still feel the grass between his toes.

Later, he would tell us that it was one of the few sensations he could still recall, after so long in his incorporeal state, and it saddened him greatly that one of the things he had forgotten was the sun’s warmth.

“Hello!” Freyja called and the ghost jumped to face us.

He offered up a tentative smile.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted.

It was curious, for though he was not much smaller than your typical full-grown dwarrow, his face was hairless, but distinctly adult, tinged with the lines of sadness and age like those that clung to Mummy’s brow.

“Excuse me,” I asked, in my politest tone. Arlen always said you should sound a nice as possible, if you’re ever going to say something that might be rude. It’s how he got away with all his underhand comments to all the grownups, because he made it sound like he was being nice. Of course, he never bothered with the effort of kindness, feigned or otherwise, with me.

“But what are you?”

After a brief flicker of a frown, his expression smoothed away and his translucent chest puffed up proudly.

“Why I’m a hobbit,” he stated, “Bilbo Baggins of Bag End.”

He held his hand out to shake, before remembering and pulling it away again, smile tightening slightly. He must be lonely, if he met people so very rarely he forgot he was dead.

We all introduced ourselves and his expression eased.

“Will you tell us about hobbits?” asked Freyja.

“Yes, I’ve never seen one before,” Girion said.

“Not even at the market,” I added, “And we even have elves there. A wizard even came once, he had fireworks!”

Bilbo, surprisingly, chortled at this, “Gandalf? Yes he passed this way a few years ago, didn’t he?”

I felt my eyes widen, Freyja’s and Girion’s much the same.

“You know Gandalf the White?” Girion cried incredulously.

“Yes,” the ghost answered, “I’ve known him a very long time. In fact, he was the one who started me on the adventure that brought me here in the first place.”

“Where are you from?”

“A place called the Shire,” Bilbo answered me, “Far to the west of the Misty Mountains.”

We all gasped, Freyja loudest of all.

“But that is so very far!” she spluttered. “Did you travel alone?”

Bilbo’s smile shifted then, as he shook his head, into something fonder yet incredibly sad.

“No, I journeyed with a company of thirteen dwarves. And Gandalf, though he did not come the whole way with us.”

Freyja was unusually quiet at the mention of dwarves, and when I glanced at her, her face was contorted into a thoughtful frown until it quickly slackened in awe.

“You- you were part of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield!” she exclaimed.

The hobbit nodded, his expression indiscernible.

“Not much is known about him,” Freyja continued, eyes alight with possibility. “He vanished not long after the Mountain was reclaimed. Went mad, they said.”

“He didn’t go mad,” Bilbo ground out. We all looked to him, but he was staring towards Erebor, his eyes faraway. “If only I could’ve saved both,” he murmured.

“Both of who?” I ventured.

Bilbo’s jaw shut with a force that would’ve clacked his teeth audibly had they still been bone.

“The battle was terrible,” he said vaguely, “I was one of many who died that day.”

I watched as he ghosted his pale fingers over the petals of a nearby snowdrop.

“Won’t you tell us about your adventure? I requested. “Please?”

He blinked a moment,, “It will take a while.”

We all glanced up to the sky, the sun still a long way from sinking beneath the horizon.

“We have time,” Girion replied.

Bilbo smiled again, that small, sad one he had before when he mentioned his dwarves.

“Very well then,” he said, “In a hole in the ground, there live a hobbit…”

Bilbo turned out to be the most wonderful storyteller and none of us realised how long we sat there until Freyja heard the city bells chiming four in the background and she leapt to her feet, interrupting Bilbo as he talked of his entering the Mountain to face down a terrifying dragon.

He was plenty understanding of our need to leave and promised to meet us at the same spot the following day.

“It is not as if I have anywhere else to go,” he said wryly.

When Freyja and I returned to the marketplace, Arlen cuffed me about the ear and scolded me for running off.

“Idiot child,” he muttered crossly and he dragged me home by my wrist. I asked him if he had ever heard of a hobbit, brave little creatures with big feet. He told me to stop being ridiculous and to stop making things up. I frowned at him all through dinner.   
-

It was a few weeks before we were able to see Bilbo again, for Arlen would not let me free the days following our meeting the hobbit, and then Girion’s health took a turn for the worse.

I saw Freyja at the market and she assured me she would go find Bilbo and apologise, and a few days later, when I saw her again, she told me how very kind he had been to her when she explained it all to him.

Next we saw Girion, he was deathly pale and Banna told us sadly that he would not be able to leave her care until he was better.

“The market is in town for a fortnight more,” Freyja said, “Send word to us if Girion is well enough.”

Banna promised that she would.

A week later, a guard found us as we played marbles beind Freyja’s father’s stall.

“His Highness is able to receive,” he said stiffly, straightening his narrow shoulders like Arlen did when he saw the baker’s daughter.

Freyja and I needed no further permission and we tore through Lower Dale, abandoning our game.

Girion was thinner still when we saw him, his breathing dangerously shallow even after only thirty yards of running. We slowed for him, but even still, when we found Bilbo, his chest was heaving with effort.

Bilbo’s smile upon seeing us soon turned worried as he saw Girion’s condition, but the boy forced his own grim smile.

“Master Bilbo,” he started without preamble, “What is it like to die?”

Bilbo blinked for a moment, then his face settled into a serious expression. I liked that about him - he didn’t treat us different because we were children.

“Well for me, it was all very sudden,” Bilbo swallowed. “I took a blow meant for another. It got me right here.” He tapped his breast, just above where his heart once lay.

“Did it hurt?”

“Briefly, but it all went dark so quickly.”

“Is that what happens when you die?” Girion persisted, “It goes dark?”

Bilbo frowned, “At first. Why are you all so curious about death today?”

Grimacing as Girion recoiled, he apologised for his slight insensitivity.

“It is most strange,” Bilbo explained, “In the darkness of your mind, a choice presents itself - you can move on to the unknown, or you can remain, if you still feel there is a purpose you must see fulfilled.”

“What purpose did you remain for?” I asked. Girion had curled up on himself, hugging his calves with his chin resting upon his knees. I patted his elbow before turning to Bilbo for his answer.

“I wished to see Thorin live to be happy again,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because he never did,” the hobbit said ominously, “He tortured himself with guilt over my death, and that of his youngest nephew Kíli. He could not bear to remain and so he left his throne to Fíli - the one I saved - and took to the wilderness. I followed, like the fool I am.” Bilbo let out a laugh, a bitter, broken sound that made me wish I could hug him. “One winter, cold and starvation claimed him. He died with the first smile on his lips in years and the whispered promise that he would see me soon.”

I let out a choked sob and I could hear Freyja forcing down a similar such noise. How awful, I thought, to be stuck wandering as a ghost when the one you love has moved on wherever it is you go when you die. And for Thorin, hoping to be reunited with his dear hobbit, only to find out Bilbo chose to remain behind and watch over him. The true wretchedness of the situation only struck me later, when I had grown old enough to understand love and its ability to consume the soul.

“Will you ever be able to move?” Freyja asked with far more gentleness than she was usually capable of.

Bilbo just shrugged, “Not even Gandalf knows that.”

Girion, who had been staring thoughtfully at a patch of sunny yellow flowers, snapped his head to Bilbo then, and he asked, his gaze determined.

“What is it like to be a ghost?”

“Very strange at first,” the hobbit answered honestly, “It is very much like floating. You drift through this world, unable to feel the wind in your hair, or smell the rain after a storm, or taste cakes in the air as they bake. It is not existence, not really, and I would not wish it upon anybody.”

Girion frowned, as if he still had questions, but instead he bade Bilbo to continue where he had left off with his tale, face to face with Smaug the Terrible.

-

For the remainder of spring and summer, we continued to meet with Bilbo, and not once more did the subjects of either his death or Thorin come up. If the conversation looked to be headed in that direction, the hobbit would soon sway it onto less personal topics.

Girion joined us more and more infrequently, until one day, in late summer, Banna came to the door, solemn faced and told us Girion was not likely to join us on anymore adventures. By early autumn, he was confined to his bed.

Once Bilbo joined us in visiting him. He did not say much, but he had that fond smile of his as he patted the air above Giron’s hand in a comforting gesture.

Ten days before Durin’s Day, when Freyja would be called back to her home in the Mountain, a grim faced guard came to the house in the cold light of the early morning.

She led me through the familiar streets of Lower Dale to the outpost, where another guard waited with a sombre Freyja.

When the door opened to Banna, her eyes glistening with unshed tears and a sympathetic attempt at a smile on her lips, I knew at once.

I had never seen a dead body before, and it was most peculiar, for it looked like Girion, except he wasn’t in there anymore. The skin was pale and very cold and his dark eyes were glassy and oh so very empty.

Freyja ran her thumb over the back of his icy hand, and with her other hand, dashed away a tear that escaped her eye.

I pretended not to see, as I dabbed pointlessly at my own face with the sleeve of my wool coat.

Bilbo appeared in the corner of the room and his looked to us both, solemnly yet kindly.

“Girion chose to give me a message before he passed on,” Bilbo told us, “He said that he is better off now, and he’ll be waiting for you.”

We just nodded.

“I hope,” Freyja said after a while, “That one day you will be reunited with Thorin.”

Bilbo’s lips twitched, “Perhaps.”

His gaze drifted out of the window, to the towering peak of the Lonely Mountain, stark against the harsh, pale blue of the sky.

“He loved Erebor you know,” Bilbo murmured, more to himself than either of us, “I feel closer to him here, so here I will wait.”

Standing in front of the window, cast in the pale morning sun, Bilbo somehow seemed both more and less real to me at the same time. The Mountain could be seen through him, and in that moment, nothing could so perfectly capture the legend, the lone burglar that floats between realities, watching over the home that was never quite his.

“Should Erebor crumble to dust, still I will endure.”


End file.
